This is Dump Mountain.

Here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, "one man's trash is another's treasure" is, for many, a way of life. Hundreds of the capital city's poorest residents can be found searching through the Steung Meanchey garbage mound on the western edge of town for food scraps or metal, plastic and trinkets to resell.

The more successful of these scavengers can afford to rent out one of the makeshift houses surrounding the dump for some $5 a month; the rest make their homes on the Mountain.

At the very top of the mound, Hotun (left), 68, and Kioun, 60, raise their 5-year-old grandson Kao in a lonely one-room shack they built here six years ago. They'd originally lived in one of the houses surrounding the dump, but moved up to the top to sell bottles of water for 500 riel, or about 12 cents, to people hunting through the garbage under the afternoon sun.

But the rubbish surrounding their shack has long since been crunched and burned down to bits of melted plastic and shards of glass, and the new trash that people hunt through is dumped several yards away. Since the couple now has no source of income, they don't eat every day and must depend on friends to give them water and food like fish.

In the back of their home are a few odds and ends, a kerosene stove and a bowl full of bright yellow bananas. On the mats to the side, two women who live near the dump took a break from the afternoon heat during their search through the rubble. Suddenly the cry of a baby erupted from a small hammock hanging in the middle of the room and his mother rose to quiet him.

Hotun and Kioun came from poor families in the Takeo province and moved to the capital in 1979 in hopes of better job opportunities. Kioun left a brother in Takeo who she hasn't seen or heard from since she left. She has since acquired a leg injury that inhibits her from walking.

At the top of this mountain, her shack an island in a sea of glittering, shattered glass, Kioun can never aspire to leave.

Thanks to Philipin for his help translating.